The Tree of Wooden Clogs

Two years in a row, the Palme d’Or went to Italian films: the Taviani brothers’ Padre Padrone in 1977 and this splendid rural epic from Ermanno Olmi. Like La Dolce Vita, this was a three-hour fresco, but hopeful, not skeptical. A village of farmers, under the boot of their master, sacrifice to send a bright child to school. That child might have been Olmi, who’s been making films since 1953 without losing his love of the land and the peasants who till it.